Sunday, January 04, 2009

The Death of Perspective

OUR financial catastrophe, like Bernard Madoff’s pyramid scheme, required all sorts of important, plugged-in people to sacrifice our collective long-term interests for short-term gain. The pressure to do this in today’s financial markets is immense. Obviously the greater the market pressure to excel in the short term, the greater the need for pressure from outside the market to consider the longer term. But that’s the problem: there is no longer any serious pressure from outside the market. The tyranny of the short term has extended itself with frightening ease into the entities that were meant to, one way or another, discipline Wall Street, and force it to consider its enlightened self-interest.

This is the essence of the crises we face politically and economically: the short term has utterly eclipsed the long term in the consciousness of our leaders. We have sold our inheritance for a bowl of Porridge. Whether it is the Congressman handing the bill writing over to the Lobbyist or the Rating Agencies selling AAA ratings to Investment Banks. Credibility earned over decades is being pissed away for short term advantage.

In time, our current society will be seen as one that ate all the food in fridge, all the food in the pantry, sent out for pizza, maxed out the credit cards and then burned the furniture while proclaiming that we are really very warm and well-fed. Financial historians in the future will say, "what were they thinking?" about our era.

We are seeing the inevitable conclusion of the World's dumbest pyramid scheme wherein those at the top of the pyramid have sought to destroy those at the bottom. Demand, kept on life support by the pawning of America, has finally collapsed.